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CHRISTIANITY AND 
THE UNITED STATES 



JOHN FRANKLIN GOUCHER 

President of The Woman's College of Baltimore 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






LiSHAKY of OONtirttSS' 

1WO OODIM HfcCtHY** § 

JUN 29, 1903 

CL/,5iTIA b 

CCVr 5. 



Copyright, 1908, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



NOTE 

A request to address the Tokyo Conference of the 
World's Student Christian Federation on "Christianity 
and the United States " accounts for the preparation of 
this paper, the latter part of which was read before that 
body at its meeting in March, 1907. 

I am keenly conscious of its inadequacy to more than 
suggest some of the outstanding facts concerning the vital 
and determining relation of Christianity to the United 
States of America. In this limited space I am debarred 
from formally defining, or even naming, the varying forms 
of evil and organized forces which contend with' it for 
mastery, or discussing our epochal conflicts, every one of 
which has marked an advance for righteousness. 

A stout volume would not be sufficient to do justice to 
the changing phases and subtle relations of this complex 
subject. But the more comprehensive the range of facts 
considered and the more thorough the analysis of the 
antagonizing forces in their relation to each other and to 
humanity, the more manifest is the dominant influence of 
Christianity in our national life and its essential relation 
to our future development. 

I have consulted, so far as possible, the original sources 
of information, and, while acknowledging my primary 
obligation to them, I desire to make special mention of 
my indebtedness for both facts and suggestions to The 
Statesman's Year Book, Dr. Daniel Dorchester, Dr. 
Josiah Strong, Dr. H. K. Carroll, Dr. J. B. Clark, and 



Dr. E. N. Hardy. 



John Franklin Goucher. 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE UNITED 
STATES 

Four centuries ago the land now occupied by 
the forty-five republics known collectively as 
the United States of America was a vast waste. 
Its stately forests were untraversed except by 
Indians, scarcely less wild than the game they 
hunted; its majestic rivers were unutilized ex- 
cept for fishing, or floating an occasional canoe 
of crudest construction; its varied and appar- 
ently inexhaustible mineral deposits were un- 
worked, its prairies untilled, and its savannas 
unsubdued. Less than half a million roving 
children of the chase were its sole occupants 
and they were without roads except the trails 
worn by their moccasined feet; without cities 
except here and there an aggregation of skin 
or bark wigwams; without art or architecture 
save that crystallized from prehistoric times in 
the ruins of the Southwest; without organized 
courts of justice or a system of broadening cul- 
ture; without literature, or a form of writing 
except a few rudimentary pictographs; and the 
land itself, though facing the Atlantic and the 



6 CHRISTIANITY AND 

Pacific, midway between Europe and Asia, was 
unknown. 

This terra incognita has become the chief 
thoroughfare of the world's commerce and 
travel. Within its borders has been developed 
a great nation with 80,000,000 self-governing 
citizens, whose industry, intelligence, initiative, 
public spirit, courage, and self-command are 
unsurpassed. Its high ideal of manhood, its 
moral stamina, even-handed justice, aggressive 
home policies, and frank, uncompromising re- 
lations to foreign nations have made it a world 
power, honored in all lands, although its stand- 
ing army of 70,000 is in numbers only fourteenth 
among the nations of the world, and in tonnage 
its navy ranks but fourth. Its judicial au- 
thority, vested in a Supreme Court of nine 
justices, who have always been incorruptible, 
is cheerfully obeyed. The public school system, 
which it has devised and elaborated and main- 
tains at an annual cost to the state of $273,216,- 
227, provides free primary and secondary 
education for every child within its borders, 
and has been commended as an inspiration 
and a model for all nations. Its mechanics 
and laborers are the best educated, the most 
productive, the best paid, the best housed, the 



THE UNITED STATES 7 

best clothed, and the best fed in the world. 
Its production of iron and steel in 1905 was 
more than half the world's output the previous 
year. Its production of gold is second only to 
Australia, and of silver to Mexico; while the 
value of its agricultural products in 1905 ex- 
ceeded the value of the total output of gold in 
the entire world during the thirty years previous. 
It has within its borders two fifths of the entire 
railway mileage of the world. The shipping 
which passed through one of its water ways, 
the locks of its Sauk Sainte Marie, during eight 
months of 1905 (36,617,699 tons) was twice the 
tonnage which during twelve months of the same 
year passed through the Suez Canal (18,310,442 
tons), which carries commerce for all the world. 

The United States has accumulated $100,000- 
000,000 in material wealth, which is more than 
the aggregate of both Great Britain and Ger- 
many, or equal to that of France, Russia, Italy, 
Belgium, and the Netherlands combined; while 
its banking power in 1905 was nearly one half 
(44 per cent) of the total banking power of the 
entire world. 

The development of the United States was 
not a simple proposition. It presented com- 
plex and unusual problems, the solution of 



8 CHRISTIANITY AND 

which required a generous, persistent purpose 
with immense constructive and vitalizing energy. 
An unknown land, beyond treacherous seas 
which no adventurous keel had ever crossed, 
had to be discovered. The ideal and germ of 
a new and comprehensive government had to 
be formed wherein liberty and law, the Church 
and the State, conscience and environment 
would have full play and co-operate to so exalt 
manhood that the sovereign people should pos- 
sess the influence and dignity formerly accorded 
to priests and kings. A population had to be 
gathered, indoctrinated, and assimilated, while 
the national life was being defined, organized, 
developed, and articulated with other nations. 
There was no nation which offered favorable 
conditions for attaining the type of manhood 
which it required. A stream cannot rise higher 
than its source, and yet this nation has been so 
developed as to measurably perform and stead- 
ily approximate the high functions proposed. 
How can this be accounted for ? What force 
could supply the motive, command the devo- 
tion, enforce the restraints, and organize the 
elements essential to meet these varied and 
phenomenal demands and develop such a na- 
tion, within such conditions ? 



THE UNITED STATES 9 

The vital, uplifting, organizing, and expand- 
ing power of Christianity is the adequate cause 
of these extraordinary results. A broad dis- 
tinction is to be made between Christianity and 
the Church. Love is the spirit of Christianity, 
while the Church is its more or less immature, 
and at times distorted, body. Christianity is 
not a series of mandatory or prohibitive enact- 
ments, neither is it a form of worship, nor a 
system of doctrine. Christianity is a life, satis- 
fying all essentially human relations by in- 
terpreting God, the Father of us all, in terms of 
human living. It is the embodiment of God 
in human personality — the extension of the 
incarnation of Jesus Christ. God is love, and he 
said, "If ye have love one to another all men shall 
know that ye are my disciples." So Christianity 
is the embodiment of the vital, transforming, 
uplifting power of love working toward righteous- 
ness, which inhibits cruelty, oppression, injustice, 
selfishness, ignorance, and all low-spirited ac- 
tivities. Liberty is a concomitant of its growth, 
and helpfulness is its normal manifestation. 

Christianity accounts for the discovery and 
settlement of America, it determined our govern- 
mental organization, and has been the dominat- 
ing influence in our national development. 



io CHRISTIANITY AND 

i. Discovery. 

The desire to extend Christianity to unknown 
lands induced Queen Isabella of Spain to pledge 
her jewels that she might provide funds to 
equip Christopher Columbus for his voyage of 
discovery. When Columbus set his adven- 
turous feet upon the New World, which Isa- 
bella's religious zeal had made it possible for 
him to discover, he planted the cross of Christ 
beside the banner of Castile and Leon, thus in- 
terpreting the desire of his royal patroness by 
dedicating this land to civil government and 
the higher authority of redeeming love. 

In later years, before the national government 
had any purpose to preempt the territory west 
of the Rocky Mountains, and when, in fact, the 
government considered that region to be inac- 
cessible and undesirable, the churches, in their 
zeal to extend the teachings of Christianity, 
sent their pioneer preachers to the extreme 
Northwest. Thus, in 1834, Rev. Jason Lee 
penetrated the untrodden forests, threaded the 
hitherto undiscovered mountain passes, forded 
or swam the unbridged rivers, and crossed the 
inhospitable plains, braving the cruelty of war- 
ring Indians, and blazed a trail for 2,000 miles 
through the trackless wilderness for the govern- 



THE UNITED STATES n 

ment to follow, and all because the love of 
Christ for human souls constrained him to 
preach the gospel to the far-away Westerners. 
Similar agencies, inspired or directed by the 
zeal for Christianity, extended our borders till 
a large part of the continent became the posses- 
sion of our nation. 

ii. Settlement. 

The earliest settlers of the original colonies 
came from various lands, with various motives 
and under various conditions, but their leaders 
were characterized by a remarkable unanimity 
of purpose — to find a refuge from spiritual 
despotism, to secure personal liberty in the 
worship of God, and to have freedom of local 
self-government in the New World. 

The "Compact of the Freemen of the Colony 
of New Plymouth," prepared in the cabin of 
the Mayflower and adopted at Cape Cod, 
November n, 1620, says: "We whose names 
are underwritten, . . . having undertaken, for 
the glory of God and advancement of the 
Christian faith and honor of our King and 
country, a voyage to plant the first colony in 
the northern part of Virginia, do by these 
presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence 



i2 CHRISTIANITY AND 

of God and of one another, covenant and com- 
bine ourselves together into a civil body politic 
for our better ordering and preservation and 
furthering of the ends aforesaid." 

This compact is a fair expression of the 
fundamental principles which to a greater or 
less degree actuated the first settlers of all the 
colonies, namely, loyalty to God, and the de- 
sire for liberty of conscience and speech, se- 
curity of person and property, and the exercise 
of their right to "form such just and equal laws 
... as shall be thought most meet and con- 
venient for the general good." 

Within ten years, in the first half of the cen- 
tury, more than 20,000 Separatists, Puritans, 
Dissenters, Independents, Presbyterians, and 
Baptists sailed from England for this land of 
religious freedom, of whom one half of one 
per cent had been graduated from Oxford or 
Cambridge. 

A careful historian has said: "The men en- 
gaged in the formation of the New England 
colonies have seldom been surpassed in sagacity 
and prowess, in piety and benevolent exertion. 
Many of them were men of education and rank. 
. . . Their heart was with God, his love their 
guide, his glory their aim." 



THE UNITED STATES 13 

The first charter of Virginia, granted by 
King James I in 1606, says: "We, greatly 
commending and graciously accepting of their 
desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, 
which may by the providence of Almighty God 
hereafter tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty 
in propagating the Christian religion to such 
people as yet live in darkness and miserable 
ignorance of the true knowledge and worship 
of God," etc. 

About 1634 an act establishing religious free- 
dom was passed in the Province of Maryland 
by "the Assembly of Freemen," and sanctioned 
by the Proprietor and Governor — the latter, 
his council, and probably a majority of the 
Assembly being Protestants. 

The Dutch of New York were children of 
the Reformation, and, however eager for trade, 
brought their religion with them. New Jersey 
was settled largely by Presbyterians. The 
Quakers of Pennsylvania had deep-rooted prin- 
ciples of personal liberty and reverence for God, 
which the Presbyterians strengthened. Dela- 
ware was settled by Christian Swedes sent out 
by their Christian king, Gustavus Adolphus, 
who declared his purpose of making the new 
colony "a blessing to the common man as well 



i 4 CHRISTIANITY AND 

as the whole Protestant world." The charter 
of Carolina, granted in 1663, recites that the 
petitioners "being excited with a laudable and 
pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian 
faith," etc. The settlement of Georgia was a 
philanthropic enterprise influenced largely by 
Moravians and Presbyterians. 

Mr. Bryce says: "It was religious zeal and 
the religious consciousness which led to the 
founding of the New England colonies two 
centuries and a half ago, those colonies whose 
spirit has in such large measure passed into the 
whole nation." 

Mr. Bancroft says: "Our fathers were not 
only Christians, but almost unanimously they 
were Protestants. The colonists from Maine 
to Carolina, the adventurous companions of 
Smith, the Puritan felons that freighted the 
fleet of Winthrop, the Quaker outlaws that fled 
from jails with the Newgate prisoner as sov- 
ereign — all had faith in God and in the soul." 

The early settlers were far from being ideal 
men or all of a kind. Many, very many, were 
adventurers with bad morals and selfish motives. 
But these were accidents of environment or 
victims of unavoidable ignorance and systematic 
oppression rather than criminals by choice, or 



THE UNITED STATES 15 

offenders against the fundamental rights of 
humanity by preference. Rarely were they 
purposefully organized for evil, while the 
leaders of thought and usually those in authority 
were persistently perfecting their organizations 
to conserve and develop Christian ethics. The 
energy of the worst, when well directed, became 
invaluable in the wilderness life. 

Dr. J. B. Clark has well said: "With all its 
unwinnowed chaff, was there ever so much 
precious seed for the planting of a nation, Pil- 
grims, Moravians, and Huguenots, Covenanters 
and Churchmen, Presbyterians and Baptists, 
Lutherans and Quakers, displaying many ban- 
ners, but on them all one Name, seeking many 
goods, but holding one good supreme — freedom 
to worship God as the Spirit taught and as 
conscience interpreted." 

Such were our forbears who laid the founda- 
tions of the Republic, and such the motives 
which influenced them to brave the rigors of 
an inhospitable wilderness. As might be ex- 
pected, the outcome was a Christian nation. 

in. Organization. 

In the early part of the second third of the 
eighteenth century that vigorous spiritual 



16 CHRISTIANITY AND 

leader, Jonathan Edwards, with earnestness 
which compelled attention and logic which was 
unanswerable, so argued for justification by 
faith as to produce a profound impression upon 
the mind and conscience of the thinking class. 
Half a decade later the eloquent and impas- 
sioned appeals of that untiring evangelist, 
George Whitefield, as he persuaded men to 
righteousness, brought a great spiritual uplift 
to all classes in America. "Magistrates and 
civilians, merchants and mechanics, women and 
children, servants and negroes, all were re- 
ligiously affected and many (estimated at 50,000 
in New England alone) were converted." 

This quickening of religious consciousness, 
deepening of ethical conviction, strengthening 
of evangelistic fervor, and awakening of patriotic 
devotion were preparatory to the birth of our 
nation. After more than a century and a half 
of isolation from their central government, 
misunderstandings of their condition, indif- 
ference to their interests, disregard of their 
petitions, oppressive legislation, and frequent 
indignities, these people, who had sought a 
haven from spiritual oppression in the New 
World, enjoyed freedom of conscience and amid 
untold hardships nursed their longings for per- 



THE UNITED STATES 17 

sonal liberty, declared their independence, and 
submitted their cause to the arbitrament of 
war. 

Great human principles and movements are 
not thought out with the mind, they are felt out 
with the heart. The process is not syllogistic, 
but experimental. By long-protracted suffer- 
ing and great personal sacrifices for a common 
cause, by courage and comradeship in its de- 
fense, and by mutual interest to be conserved 
the colonists were fused into oneness of desire 
for national life. This their Continental Con- 
gress formulated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and subsequently the Constitution 
defined the powers of the government and safe- 
guarded the rights of its citizens. Article VI 
provides that "No religious test shall ever be 
required as a qualification to any office or 
public trust under the United States." But the 
principles which underlie the Constitution are 
identical with and essentially related to the 
spirit of Christianity. This fact may be set 
forth most convincingly by a few quotations, 
official and otherwise, from eminent and un- 
prejudiced men. 

Mr. Bryce, in The American Common- 
wealth, says: "There is no established church 



18 CHRISTIANITY AND 

in the United States. All religious bodies are 
absolutely equal before the law and unrecog- 
nized by the law, except as voluntary associations 
of private citizens. ... It never occurs to the 
average American that there is any reason why 
a state church should exist, yet each House of 
Congress has a chaplain and opens its proceed- 
ings each day with prayer. The President an- 
nually, after the end of the harvest, issues a 
proclamation ordering a general thanksgiving 
and occasionally appoints a day of fasting and 
humiliation. 

"So prayers are offered in the State Legisla- 
ture and State governors issue proclamations 
for days of religious observance. In 1863 
Congress requested the President to appoint a 
day of humiliation and prayer. In the army 
and navy provision is made for religious serv- 
ice conducted by chaplains of various denom- 
inations. In most States there exist laws pun- 
ishing blasphemy or profane swearing by the 
name of God, and laws restricting or forbidding 
trade or labor on the Sabbath. 

"The matter may be summed up by saying 
that Christianity is in fact understood to be, 
though not the legally established religion, yet, 
the national religion. . . . The Americans deem 



THE UNITED STATES 19 

the general acceptance of Christianity to be one 
of the main sources of their national prosperity." 

Justice Allen says: "Christianity is not the 
legal religion of the States, as established by 
law. But it is in fact, and ever has been, the 
religion of the people. This fact is everywhere 
prominent in all our civil and political history, 
and has been from the first recognized and 
acted upon by the people, as well as by con- 
stitutional conventions, by legislatures, and by 
courts of justice." 

The New York "Journal of Commerce" 
editorially said: "The Bible is the corner stone 
of our whole fabric, and that Book, in the ver- 
nacular tongue, in the hands of everybody, is 
the grand principle of Americanism. This is 
the American plan of liberty." 

Daniel Webster, distinguished as both jurist 
and statesman, said in his plea before the 
Supreme Court in the Girard will case: "It is 
the same in Pennsylvania as elsewhere; the 
general principles and public policy are some- 
times established by constitutional provisions, 
sometimes by legislative enactments, sometimes 
by judicial decisions, sometimes by general 
consent. But however they may be established, 
there is nothing |hat we look for with more 



20 CHRISTIANITY AND 

certainty than the general principle that Chris- 
tianity is the law of the land. This is the case 
among the Puritans of New England, the 
Episcopalians of the Southern States, the Penn- 
sylvania Quakers, the Baptists, the mass of the 
followers of Whitefield and Wesley, and the 
Presbyterians; all brought and all adopted this 
great truth, and all sustain it, . . . all proclaim 
that Christianity to which the sword and fagot 
are unknown, gentle, tolerant Christianity, is 
the law of the land." 

Professor Story in his great work on the 
Constitution, says: "There never has been a 
period in which the common law did not recog- 
nize Christianity as lying at its foundation. It 
repudiates every act done in violence of its 
duties of perfect obligation. It pronounces 
illegal every contract offensive to its morals." 

Chief Justice Shea, of the Marine Court of 
New York city, says : "The Constitution of the 
United States of America, and the laws in pur- 
suance thereof, declare, with approved wisdom 
and decorum, by necessary presupposition and 
inference, that the tenets of the Christian re- 
ligion lie at the foundation of the government 
and are to protect and regulate its operations. 
Our own government, and the laws which ad- 



THE UNITED STATES 21 

minister it, are in every part, legislative, judicial, 
and executive, Christian in nature, form, and 
purpose." 

Judge Strong, of the United States Supreme 
Court, says: "The laws and institutions of all 
the States are built on the foundation of rever- 
ence for Christianity." 

In the case of Holy Trinity Church vs. United 
States, the Supreme Court, after mentioning 
various circumstances, formally declares, "These 
and many other matters which might be noticed 
add a volume of unofficial declarations to the 
mass of organic utterances that this is a Chris- 
tian nation." 

Nothing is more certain that this, the 
spirit of Christianity determined the govern- 
mental organization of the United States, as 
it accounts for the discovery and settlement of 
America. 

iv. Development. 

The grant of land which the government made 
to its soldiers of the Revolution and its home- 
stead preemption laws, the sympathetic response 
of individual churches to applications for pastoral 
service from former parishioners who had moved 
West, and the zeal of various Home Missionary 



22 CHRISTIANITY AND 

Societies contributed largely to the expansion 
of the nation. 

In 1800 the United States included only six- 
teen States, with an area of 827,442 square miles 
and a population of 5,308,483, spread like a 
picket-line along the Atlantic slope, while Ohio 
was a far-distant Territory. In 1900 it ex- 
tended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, includ- 
ing forty-five States, an area of 3,025,600 square 
miles, a population of 76,303,387, and had ac- 
cumulated $94,300,000,000 in material wealth. 

During the century twenty-nine great com- 
monwealths, each with an average area very 
nearly as large as England and Scotland com- 
bined, had been carved out of the wilderness, 
organized and equipped with all the accessories 
of the most advanced Christian civilization, 
5,000,000 farms had been brought under culti- 
vation and stocked with domestic animals, 
valued at $2,228,123,134, mines had been de- 
veloped, roads constructed, mills and manu- 
factories established, while homes had been 
built and furnished for 70,000,000 citizens. 

This involved the incoming and assimilation 
of multitudes of immigrants. During the last 
sixty years of the century more than 24,000,000 
foreigners, whose financial resources did not 



THE UNITED STATES 23 

average $19 in cash, have come to dwell within 
our borders. The majority of these were un- 
familiar with our language, and a large per 
cent were illiterate, ignorant of evangelical 
Christianity, and, having inherited a spirit of 
intolerance or anarchy, which they smuggled 
in under their naturalization papers, they were 
out of sympathy with the genius of our govern- 
ment. These and their descendants had to be 
informed — in many cases reformed — and as- 
similated. 

Isolation is the mother of barbarism, as sepa- 
ration from the gentle restraints of home is a 
fruitful cause of moral degeneration. The ag- 
ricultural population in our rapidly advancing 
frontiers was scattered, while in mining, lumber, 
and construction camps rough men, separated 
from the refining associations of mother, wife, 
and daughters, and subjected to the gambling 
and impure influences usual to such conditions, 
gathered in their scramble for wealth. 

If there are gross sins among us and occasional 
ebullitions of inhumanity which shock the moral 
sense — and we are sadly conscious of their num- 
ber and variety — they neither interpret the 
spirit of Christianity nor the steady trend of our 
national life, but contradict both and reveal the 



24 CHRISTIANITY AND 

obduracy of the material and pernicious in- 
fluences which complicate the problem we are 
gradually solving. 

Providentially, previous to 1840 our total im- 
migration from all quarters did not exceed half 
a million. In the earlier years of the century 
these came largely from Great Britain and 
Canada, and aided sympathetically to reproduce 
the spirit of the nation in the States organized 
within that period. But for the last quarter of 
the century more than half the immigrants were 
Italian, Hungarian, and Russian, and their per- 
centage of illiteracy was 45, 24, and 25 respec- 
tively. 

In 1863 our government emancipated 4,000,- 
000 negro slaves, an inheritance from colonial 
days, all of whom were illiterate. What power 
other than the spirit of Christianity, which had 
made us a nation of freemen, could prepare 
such unpromising material to exercise the rights 
and perform the duties of freemen ? 

The citizens of the United States, from 
earliest times, had a prophetic dread of large 
populations developing in new areas and seek- 
ing admission into the Union without possessing 
the Christian character and institutions essen- 
tial to a self-governing people. 



THE UNITED STATES 25 

The ordinance passed by Congress in 1787, 
establishing "The Territory Northwest of the 
Ohio River," stated that "Religion, morality, 
and knowledge being essential to good govern- 
ment and the happiness of mankind" were "for- 
ever" to be encouraged. This ordinance in- 
augurated the government of Territories as 
incipient States and barred the extension of 
slavery. 

Within the first decade after the adoption of 
the Constitution of the United States, the Bap- 
tist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Re- 
formed Churches, in Massachusetts, Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, and other States, without 
consultation but almost simultaneously, formed 
societies to supply money and preachers to work, 
as they stated it, for "the welfare of the region 
beyond," and "overtake the rapidly multiplying 
settlements with the means of Christian civili- 
zation." Within the same decade the Meth- 
odists, who are a missionary propaganda by 
both doctrine and discipline, organized the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 

During the nineteenth century more than 
thirty national Home Missionary Societies de- 
veloped within the evangelical churches, and 
expended over $200,000,000 for the extension 



26 CHRISTIANITY AND 

of Christianizing influences among the widely 
scattered settlers. 

In 1777, while our War of Independence was 
in progress, our scant financial resources but 
partially organized and overburdened and our 
national existence at stake, a memorial was 
presented to Congress petitioning the govern- 
ment to help supply the people with Bibles. 
Congress referred the petition to a committee, 
who recommended "that the government take 
immediate measures to secure 20,000 copies 
from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere at the 
expense of Congress." In 1781 Congress, by a 
special resolution, highly recommended to the 
people of the United States the Bible printed by 
Robert Aitkin, of Philadelphia. Before 18 15 
over 130 societies had been organized in the 
United States to print or distribute the Bible. 

The American Bible Society, organized in 
1 8 16, had an income last year of $821,223 and 
issued 2,236,755 Bibles or portions of the Bible, 
in various languages. It has issued since its 
organization 78,509,529 copies, a considerable 
part of which were for distribution abroad. It 
has 541 auxiliary societies, and there are many 
other smaller Bible societies in the nation en- 
gaged in similar work. 



THE UNITED STATES 27 

As the teachings of the Bible are the inspira- 
tion of our national life, a careful canvass was 
made of all the States and Territories at least 
four times during the nineteenth century to sup- 
ply every family with a copy in its own language. 

The American Tract Society, organized in 
1825 to disseminate Christian literature, was 
preceded by many local organizations in the 
individual churches. In three quarters of a 
century it has issued about 800,000,000 copies 
of its various publications, and there are many 
similar but smaller societies. 

The American Sunday School Union, or- 
ganized in 1824, has gathered over 100,000 
Sunday schools, with 600,000 voluntary teachers, 
by whom the Bible and Christian hymns have 
been taught to 4,500,000 Sunday school scholars. 
In addition to this it has prepared Christian 
literature adapted to children and young people, 
and distributed it among the needy churches 
and Sunday schools, in our army and navy, 
reformatories, prisons, penitentiaries, and among 
the dependent classes, at an aggregate expense 
of over $9,000,000. Most of the larger denom- 
inations have similar organizations. 

Possibly the most distinctively American in- 
stitution is our public school. It is among the 



28 CHRISTIANITY AND 

most formative of our many agencies working 
for the moral and intellectual education of the 
people, and it owes its origin and development 
to the spirit and foresight of the churches. 
Evangelical Christianity inevitably quickens in- 
tellectual activity, begets an appreciation of the 
relations and responsibilities of life, and develops 
opportunities for making the most of one's self. 

In 1645 tne People of Dorchester made the 
"first public provision in the world for a free 
school supported by a direct taxation on the 
inhabitants of the town." The teacher was 
required to open the school morning and even- 
ing with prayer and to catechize his scholars in 
the principles of the Christian religion. 

So public schools were devised and fostered 
in every colony, with distinctive religious in- 
struction as their chief concern. Starting with 
widely scattered local initiative, they had three 
things in common: the religious impulse, the 
church members as their loyal and liberal pro- 
moters, and Christian character as their objec- 
tive. 

The schools have been developed and greatly 
improved in organization, supervision, equip- 
ment, and methods of teaching by converging 
influences and the combined efforts of many 



THE UNITED STATES 29 

devoted and efficient educators. While they do 
not impart formal religious instruction, leaving 
that to the home and the Church, and most of 
them do not include the Bible in their daily 
exercises, to the great regret of very many, yet 
their teachers are generally Christians and their 
discipline and trend are increasingly ethical. 

All religions are more or less educative. 
Christianity is essentially so. Plant it any- 
where and the demand for a Christian college 
soon emerges. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that our American colleges owe their founda- 
tion and maintenance to the spirit and liberality 
of the churches. 

Harvard, the first institution for the promo- 
tion of higher education in America, was born 
of religious conviction and adopted as its motto, 
"In Christi Gloriam. ,, For more than 130 
years every president, except one, was a minister, 
and during its first century 45 per cent of its 
graduates were ministers. 

The grant for the second college, William and 
Mary, founded in 1693 in Virginia, was made 
"for propagating the pure gospel of Christ, our 
only Mediator, to the praise and honor of Al- 
mighty God," and it owed its success to the 
Rev. Dr. Blair. 



3 o CHRISTIANITY AND 

Yale was founded in response to the formal 
action of a Synod of the Church in 1698, that 
"youth may be instructed in the arts and the 
sciences, who through the blessing of Almighty 
God may be fitted for public employment in the 
Church and civil State." Its trustees were 
limited to Congregational ministers living in the 
colony, and for more than a century every one 
of its presidents was a minister. 

Every college projected in the colonial period 
owed its origin to the Church, and that which 
was universally true in the colonial period has 
been predominantly true ever since. The Amer- 
ican educational spirit was inspired and has been 
nourished by the Christian churches. 

Of the 370 colleges and universities reported 
by the Commissioner of Education in 1884 — I 
quote from that report because it is the latest 
I have at hand — 309, or over 83 per cent, were 
under denominational control; only 61, or less 
than 17 per cent, were undenominational, and 
23 of these were State institutions. More than 
three fourths, nearly four fifths (79 per cent), 
of all the students were in the denominational 
institutions. 

A record of ten Western colleges and three 
theological seminaries shows that their grad- 



THE UNITED STATES 31 

uates had served as pastors or missionaries in 
3,000 towns, and supplied 15,000 towns with 
30,000 teachers. 

The expenditure for Bibles, Sunday school 
extension, tract distribution, denominational 
literature, and Christian education has exceeded 
$300,000,000, which added to the $200,000,000 
expended in church extension, makes over 
$500,000,000, voluntarily contributed by Chris- 
tian people, that youth, the isolated and the less 
favored, might be prepared for Christian citizen- 
ship — the strong bearing the infirmities of the 
weak, and so fulfilling the law of Christ. 

The problems of a growing nation continu- 
ally change. This is especially true where 
personal freedom gives large stimulus to per- 
sonal initiative, and social, industrial, and 
economic conditions are finding varied and 
colossal development. It has come to pass that 
the frontiers of our civilization are found to-day 
in our "homeless cities." In 1800 but 3 per 
cent of our population was urban; in 1900, 33 
per cent. In our 160 cities of 25,000 or more, 
53 per cent of the population are foreign-born 
or of foreign parentage. 

This change of population from the country 
to congested centers in the cities, and its con- 



32 CHRISTIANITY AND 

comitant conditions, seriously compromise the 
home life and threaten both virtue and intelli- 
gence. The business opportunities, varied at- 
tractions, and general glamour of the city appeal 
especially to young men and young women, 
alluring them away from the less strenuous 
demands of the rustic and village life. Un- 
sophisticated, homeless, and ofttimes without 
employment or financial resources, they are 
in danger of being caught in a maelstrom 
of vice and swept into dissipation and im- 
purity before they have gained a footing. 
The Church is a natural haven and wise 
friend for such. 

The Young Men's Christian Association, 
transplanted from England in 1851, has done a 
magnificent work among this especially strategic 
class. In 1 90 1, at the close of half a century, it 
had 1,600 separate organizations, 332,224 mem- 
bers, and over $24,000,000 invested in its work. 
It has a separate department for colleges and 
schools, with a membership of 170,000; a de- 
partment for work among railroad men, with 
170 organizations and 50,000 members. An- 
other department is conducting efficient work 
in our army and navy; 632 army posts report 
some form of its work. 



THE UNITED STATES 33 

The Young Women's Christian Association 
is working effectively among the young women. 

The Student Volunteer Movement; the bureau 
to extend organized Bible study; the employ- 
ment bureaus; the inexpensive, attractive, and 
well-guarded homes for young men and young 
women, and other forms of beneficent enter- 
prise by which these associations interpret the 
spirit of Christianity, seeking the young, quick- 
ening and conserving their holiest aspirations, 
and bringing to them enlargement of oppor- 
tunity, are significant factors in our national 
life. 

The Society of Christian Endeavor, the Ep- 
worth League, the Baptist Young People's 
Union, and similar organizations, with their 
enrollment of 5,000,000 young people whom 
they seek to indoctrinate in the principles of 
Christianity, interest in the activities of the 
Church, and prepare for good citizenship, are 
far-reaching in their influence. 

The Sunday schools, for Bible instruction, 
with their aggregate enrollment of 14,000,000 
children and youth, the almost interminable list 
of other denominational and interdenomina- 
tional organizations, covering the whole range 
of life from the creche and free kindergarten to 



34 CHRISTIANITY AND 

the homes for the aged and homes for the in- 
curable, suggest the varied manifestations and 
exhaustless ministries of the spirit of Christian- 
ity as it stands related to our nation and its 
development. 

Education, obedience to law, reverence for 
truth, temperance, security of life and property, 
material prosperity, social progress, patriotism, 
conscience, integrity are nurtured by Chris- 
tianity. In a government by the people and 
for the people a high moral sense of duty 
counts for more than anything else. 

This spirit of consecration, which generously 
gives of its substance and braves all dangers to 
secure the extension of Christianity, is neither 
self-centered nor indifferent to the demands of 
citizenship. Through its virility and construc- 
tive influence the development of the nation 
was secured. 

Among the many extraordinary facts in the 
political history of the nineteenth century the 
most significant is the development of the 
United States of America. Nothing else bulks 
so large or is so inclusive of resources and 
achievement. Victor in every war which has 
engaged her prowess, determining her own 
ideals and prosecuting them in her own way, 



THE UNITED STATES 35 

the record of her organic evolution by the con- 
structive influence of vital forces working from 
within is without a parallel. 

The potential cause of this phenomenal evolu- 
tion is the spirit of Christianity. That accounts 
for the discovery and settlement of America, it 
determined our governmental organization, and 
has been the dominating influence in our 
national development. 

v. Present Status. 

Marvelous as this record is, the growth of the 
evangelical churches has been more remarkable 
than the development of our nation. The cause 
must be greater than its results. In 1800 the 
Protestant church members were to the popula- 
tion of the United States as four to fifty-eight; 
in 1900, as four to seventeen. That is, during 
the century the evangelical church membership 
increased 3.41 — times as fast as the population. 
The 2,340 churches, valued at $1,500,000 in 
1800, had increased to 187,800 churches, valued 
at $724,900,000, in 1900. If the value of par- 
sonages and denominational schools be added, 
there was $1,000,000,000 invested in property 
specifically dedicated for the dissemination of 
Christianity, all the free gift of its adherents. 



36 CHRISTIANITY AND 

Progress is a relative matter and, while we 
are yet far from the goal, the power of the gospel 
of Christ to redeem men, to uplift society, and 
to make a nation strong by righteousness has 
been demonstrated, and this force was never 
stronger, nor strengthening more rapidly, in the 
United States than to-day. The spirit of Chris- 
tianity is more manifest in its varied activities, 
has a larger following among men of culture and 
influence, and is more widely diffused and con- 
structive in our social problems than ever before. 

As Timothy Dwight has well said, in the 
early part of the last century: "There was more 
individuality and less of the combination of 
forces, more of private effort directed to per- 
sonal development and less of organized work 
for the common well-being, more serious reflec- 
tion on the inner life and less of the freeness and 
largeness of Christian love, and less of the 
joyousness of Christian hope in its contrast to 
self-examining questions and self-distrusting 
fears." 

Mr. Bryce says: "The relaxation of the old 
strictness of orthodoxy has not diminished the 
zeal of the various churches, nor their hold upon 
their adherents, nor their attachment to the 
fundamental doctrines of Christianity." 



THE UNITED STATES 37 

Dr. John Watson, after stating the criticism 
and evidence of non-Christian activities, says: 
"Never in any age nor in any land was that 
which saves and sanctifies presented more 
clearly and forcefully than it is, by word and 
life, in the Christian Church in the United 
States at the present time." 

An average of twelve to fifteen new churches 
are being completed and dedicated every day 
of every week in the year within the 'common- 
wealth. The churches, through their Church 
Extension Societies, are giving annually $6,000- 
000, largely as grants in aid for new churches 
to the less favored communities. 

In 1900 the churches spent for the main- 
tenance of their activities, for philanthropy, and 
for Christian education $287,047,300. In the 
last four years they made a net gain of 11,771 
ministers, 13,633 churches, and 3,433,959 com- 
municants. The annual loss by death averages 
about one in seventy-five, and the loss by dis- 
cipline is a considerable number; these make 
a total for the four years of, say, 1,400,000 
which must be added to the net gain in member- 
ship to determine the actual ingathering. 

If in America Christianity is characterized 
by less mysticism than formerly, it is distin- 



38 CHRISTIANITY AND 

guished by greater righteousness. If the sanc- 
timonious look is less conspicuous, the out- 
stretched hand is more in evidence. If it no 
longer burns witches and heretics, there is a 
deep moral revulsion against acts which form- 
erly passed uncondemned. If the historic and 
literary settings of the Bible have been examined 
more critically and discussed less reservedly, 
nothing has been disturbed but a few human 
interpretations, and unthinking credulity is giv- 
ing place to a more intelligent faith. Once the 
institution was more to its members than the 
underlying principles of love which it is in- 
tended to embody. Now these principles are 
more insisted upon than the institutional pecu- 
liarities. If the church members are not so 
jealous for a particular system, they are more 
concerned for righteousness and the larger 
kingdom of God. A notable absence of con- 
troversy, a kindliness of spirit, a hopefulness 
and expectancy in the discussions of our national 
denominational assemblies, mark the dawn of 
a better day. Instead of the dissipating rival- 
ries of overzealous sectarians which at times 
have embroiled the Church, federated activities 
and organic union among branches of the same 
denominational family are securing economy of 



THE UNITED STATES 39 

resources, broadening of influence, and increas- 
ing efficiency. 

The directive influence of the college graduate 
in the United States is very remarkable. Of 
the men over twenty-one years of age, about 
one in every one hundred, on the average, is a 
college graduate. A century ago it was only 
one in about every five hundred. Yet the col- 
lege graduates have furnished 73+ per cent of 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence; 
53 — P er cent °f tne Convention of 1787, which 
framed our Constitution; 32 per cent of the 
members of our national House of Representa- 
tives; 46 per cent of our senators; 65 per cent of 
our Presidents; and 73 per cent of the judges 
of our Supreme Court, while every chief justice 
except one has been a college graduate. Of the 
men now living who have won conspicuous suc- 
cess, as shown by Who's Who in America, 
73+ per cent are college graduates; and the 
percentage is gradually rising. 

The increasing influence of Christianity 
through men of culture and influence is indicated 
by the significant fact that, while the proportion 
of students in the colleges and universities who 
were members of the evangelical churches 
seventy-five years ago was only 25 per cent, 



4o CHRISTIANITY AND 

and fifty years ago 33 per cent, it is to-day 53 
per cent and steadily increasing. 

When men of clean lives go from America to 
a foreign land, where they are unknown, freed 
from the restraints of home, in peculiar con- 
ditions, overstrained nervously, or suffering 
from ennui, they sometimes cater to their lowest 
nature and behave in a beastly manner. That 
is neither the fault of the land they are visiting 
nor a correct interpretation of the land of their 
birth. So if others coming to America become 
loose in their habits, that does not interpret the 
land from which they came nor the ideals of 
the land where they fall. It is only just to 
estimate every land by those who live in it, 
rather than by those who live out of it or fail 
to adjust themselves to its ideals. 

As Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall has said: "If it 
can be said that some men lose in college the 
religious impulse imparted in childhood's home, 
it may also be said that many men find in col- 
lege a conception of God, of life, of personal 
obligation all the more controlling because ac- 
quired under conditions of moral liberty that 
tested the soul as with a refiner's fire. ,, 

The influence of our colleges and universities 
is so vitally related to the life of their students, 



THE UNITED STATES 41 

and through them to the future of our nation 
and the world, we will do well to call expert 
testimony as to its character and tendency. 

President Harper, late of Chicago University, 
said: "There is to be found to-day a religious 
interest in our colleges which is absolutely un- 
paralleled. . . . It is unquestionable that the 
life of students to-day is more natural, more 
wholesome, more pure than in any previous 
period of education/' 

President Butler, of Columbia University, 
says : "Christian Associations exercise a power- 
ful influence in college and intercollegiate ath- 
letics. Their members are almost uniformly 
among the leaders in the social, athletic, and 
scholastic life of the schools, and in their reli- 
gious talk and living there is a refreshing and 
convincing note of manliness and whole-hearted- 
ness." 

From the History of Yale University we 
quote: "Unquestionably the college is produc- 
ing a more perfect physical manhood, which 
means the elimination of many temptations and 
not a few vices. The intellectual standards 
have steadily advanced, so that a graduate of 
1800 could not more than meet the entrance 
requirements of 1900; and the personal ad- 



42 CHRISTIANITY AND 

vance in the deepening of the moral and spiritual 
life is fully as conspicuous as that in the physical 
and mental realm." 

President Tucker says : "Our colleges are the 
recruiting ground for all agencies which do 
their work at the heart of humanity. . . . Deeper 
than the currents of the physical life, which run 
so swiftly, are the currents of the spiritual life." 

E. N. Hardy says: "Every year the propor- 
tion of students who are Christians when enter- 
ing college rises, and, while the stated revival 
is disappearing from both church and college, 
the average annual number of conversions in 
our colleges is to the total enrollment of students 
proportionately larger. . . . Never in the his- 
tory of America was there such a large and 
superb body of young men and young women 
of college education eagerly pressing into the 
hardest places of service for Christ and the 
Church." 

Anyone who has considered the Student 
Volunteer Conferences, held at Toronto in 1902 
and at Nashville in 1906, or this Conference of 
the World's Student Christian Federation in 
Tokyo, must concede that they are indices of 
the "most marked religious phenomena of the 
age." This one phase of the religious life of 



THE UNITED STATES 43 

the college demonstrates that Christianity is 
becoming more and more deeply rooted in the 
centers of education and in the lives of the men 
of trained intellect. "The history of civiliza- 
tion teaches that as go the colleges so goes the 
nation." 

The rays of light most effective in photog- 
raphy are those which do not class among the 
seven colors, but lie just beyond the spectrum 
as discernible to the unaided eye. So the 
activities which do not class as specifically 
under the direction of the churches, but are 
extra-denominational, may best photograph the 
pervasive influence of the spirit of Christianity 
in our nation. 

Of the 50,000 newspapers and periodicals in 
the world, 20,528 are published in the United 
States. These may be classed as religious, semi- 
religious, or secular. A large number of the 
secular papers, both daily and weekly, regularly 
print the weekly Sunday school Bible lessons, 
with carefully prepared expositions, while most 
of the secular papers have from one column to 
a page or more devoted to "religious items and 
comments"; and all, with rare exceptions, 
whatever may be the sensational character of 
their news columns, ring true editorially to the 



44 CHRISTIANITY AND 

great ethical questions and benevolent activities 
which interpret Christianity. 

The courts of justice, when inducting into 
office and taking testimony, administer the oath 
upon the Bible. 

The care of the State for the afflicted and 
defective classes, in providing hospitals for the 
diseased, almshouses for the destitute, homes 
for the incurable, workhouses for the indigent, 
asylums for the insane, special schools for the 
blind, deaf, mute, and simple-minded, and re- 
formatories for the incorrigible, is a practical 
charity born of the Christian spirit. A special 
bulletin recently issued by the Census Bureau 
reports 4,207 of these benevolent institutions, 
and the cost of maintaining them, exclusive of 
improvements, for the year 1903 was $55>577- 
633. Of this sum $22,353,184 was paid from 
public funds. 

It is estimated that in 1904 in the State of 
New York $25,000,000 was spent for philan- 
thropy. A distinguished English writer says: 
"In works of active beneficence no country has 
surpassed, perhaps none has equalled, the 
United States/' 

It has come to pass that employers, both 
corporate and individual, are seeking industrial 



THE UNITED STATES 45 

betterment through the development of man- 
hood by substituting justice and humanity for 
spasmodic charity, in well-directed efforts to 
improve the physical, mental, and moral con- 
dition of their employees. These efforts are so 
varied and significant as to constitute one of 
the most noteworthy features of our social 
progress. They include profit-sharing, savings 
associations, accident relief funds, insurance, 
pensions, public buildings, libraries, gymna- 
siums, athletic grounds, baths, model homes, 
social and educational clubs, lectures, lunch 
rooms, rest rooms, hospitals, trained nurses, 
park carriages and seaside cottages for con- 
valescents, week's vacation with pay, annual 
excursions, loans on homes at moderate interest, 
prizes for suggestions in machines or methods, 
and many others, all of which register a prac- 
tical recognition of the ethical responsibility of 
both employers and employees. A number of 
firms have added to their business staff a "social 
secretary," to promote a closer relationship be- 
tween the employer and employee. 

The legislation intended to regulate the rela- 
tion between capital and labor is growing 
steadily more and more considerate of the 
supreme value of personality, and more and 



46 CHRISTIANITY AND 

more restrictive of combinations, indifference 
to health, and sordidness. It provides that the 
employee shall have a safe place to labor, safe 
appliances and proper instruction in their use, 
and the employer is held liable for damages 
resulting from failure to do this. About half 
the States provide for the sanitary regulation of 
factories and shops, with inspectors to enforce 
the laws, which are constantly being improved, 
and more than a dozen States maintain free 
employment bureaus. 

The National Civic Federation, representing 
labor, capital, and the people at large, is com- 
posed of most representative men. Its work is 
in the interests of justice and conciliation, which 
it seeks to secure through the dissemination of 
information, development of confidence, and 
encouragement of conferences. 

The spirit of arbitration, industrial, commer- 
cial, national, and international, which appeals 
to reason instead of force, makes steady progress. 
Processes are sometimes slow when conditions 
are varied, but, as Dr. John Watson says, "there 
can be no question that whenever an issue of 
righteousness is put before the nation, the na- 
tion decides rightly." 

The attitude of the nation toward Cuba, the 



THE UNITED STATES 4 7 

Philippines, South America, Mexico, China, 
Japan, and other nations, is no spasmodic ex- 
pression of a Christian spirit which she fails to 
practice at home. When our civil war had been 
fought to a finish, establishing the government 
of the people and eradicating human slavery 
from our borders, the victors, admiring the 
honesty, courage, and sacrifices of their de- 
feated fellow citizens, "sent them home equipped 
with the needful appliances of husbandry, to 
till the soil, repair their shattered industries, 
reconstruct the States upon whose altars they 
had offered their lives, and invited them to 
share the glory of governing the restored re- 
public." 

There is great awakening to civic righteous- 
ness throughout the nation, which is keying up 
political integrity, fiduciary honesty, and social 
purity. As these are all essentially ethical 
questions they come within the Church's sphere 
of influence, though they are neither confined 
to nor directed by the Church. This move- 
ment is organized in more than eighty centers 
and is strengthening its influence by detailed 
organization, interchange of counsel, and an 
ably conducted educational propaganda, which 
seeks to root its motives in the conscience and 



48 CHRISTIANITY AND 

intelligence of the citizen. Many notable vic- 
tories have been won, like those in Boston, 
New York, Jersey City, Philadelphia, Cincin- 
nati, Cleveland, Toledo, and Salt Lake City. 
High officials have been held to strict account, 
like the senator from Oregon, the senator from 
Kansas, the management of great insurance 
companies and commercial corporations, and 
various prominent politicians. The steady pull 
of the national life is toward the ethical standard 
of Christianity. 

While the Constitution provides that "No 
religious test shall ever be required as a quali- 
fication to any office or public trust under the 
United States," widely diffused appreciation of 
Christian character and its dominating in- 
fluence throughout the nation are shown by the 
high positions to which Christians have been 
called by the free franchise of the people. In 
September, 1906, just before leaving America, 
I instituted inquiries concerning the religious 
affiliation of the members of Congress, and 
regret that want of time prevented me from 
securing complete returns, but I give a 
summary of the facts so far as I received 
them. 

Of the 387 members of the House of Repre- 



tHE UNITED STATES 49 

sentatives, 252, or 65 per cent, were reported, 
and 216, or 85+ per cent of these, are members 
of the evangelical churches. Of the 90 senators, 
60, or two thirds, were reported, and 53, or 88+ 
per cent, are connected with the evangelical 
churches, and nearly every member in both 
Houses of Congress is a believer in some form 
of Christianity. 

Of the 9 members of the Cabinet, 7 are 
evangelical Christians, 1 Roman Catholic, and 
I Unitarian. 

Of the 9 members of the Supreme Court, 6 
are evangelical Christians, 2 Roman Catholics, 
and 1 Unitarian. There has never been an 
atheist or agnostic (with possibly one excep- 
tion) among the judges of our Supreme Court. 
These men, who know evidence and constitute 
one of the great judicial bodies of the world, 
all (with one possible exception) have been 
believers in some form of Christianity. 

Of the 25 who have been Presidents of the 
United States all have been believers in Chris- 
tianity, 16 have been communicants. Since 
President Lincoln, who was a man of faith and 
prayer, everyone elected to that high office has 
been a communicant in some one of the evan- 
gelical churches. Could there be a stronger 



5o CHRISTIANITY AND 

testimony to the pervasive influence of the 
spirit of Christianity ? 

Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to "Go 
heal," which includes all forms of benevolence; 
to "Go teach," which includes all forms of 
Christian education; to "Go disciple," or to 
bring all instructed persons into organic rela- 
tion to the kingdom of God. The essential 
spirit of Christianity is interpreted and to be 
gauged by obedience to these three commands. 

The benevolence of the United States is more 
varied, considerate, widely diffused, and gen- 
erous than at any time in its previous history. 
Education in the United States, both primary 
and advanced, is more thorough, more acces- 
sible to our youth, and more nearly interprets 
the ethics of Christianity than ever before. The 
presidents of the State, military, naval, and 
undenominational as well as of the denomina- 
tional colleges and schools for higher education 
are almost to a man believers in some form of 
Christianity. Not one of them is identified 
with any other form of religion, and the great 
majority of them are evangelical Christians. 
This is almost equally true of the leading pro- 
fessors. If an occasional one is found who is 
not, it is relatively so rare an occurrence as to 



THE UNITED STATES 51 

be very conspicuous. Christianity is the per- 
vading and directing influence in American 
education. Each year the number of Bible 
classes maintained by the students for devo- 
tional study increases and the interest deepens, 
while the colleges are more largely offering 
systematic Bible study as an elective and in 
their regular curriculum. 

Last year (1906) the churches in America 
made a net gain of 4,300 ministers, 3,635 
churches, and 870,389 communicants, and gave 
$8,980,448 to extend the ministries and knowl- 
edge of Christian truth among non-Christian 
peoples. 

The tone of our public life, the quality of 
our statesmanship, the ideals of our nation, 
have been lifted closer to the ethical standards 
of Christianity and in a measure sanctified dur- 
ing the past ten years. 

Evangelical Christianity, so patient and per- 
sistently constructive, so essentially educative 
and uplifting, has been the potential cause of 
our growth and transformation. By the gentle 
persuasion of loving ministry, by the inherent 
energy of the simple truths concerning God and 
man as revealed in Christ Jesus, by the living 
force of consecrated lives, the wilderness has 



52 CHRISTIANITY AND 

been made to blossom as the rose; a world power 
has developed where there were no people; 
loyalty to Christian principles has evolved an 
unprecedented wealth of resources, and the 
fundamental conviction of the American people 
is that "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin 
is a reproach to any people." 



JUN29 1908 



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